Elements of Fire Emblem: Feedback Loops

[sithys]

So I would like to talk a little bit about feedback loops. My experience with Fire Emblem is limited to playing the game normally on average difficulty settings, so I will leave it up to the community to point out any areas which I do not have direct experience with where feedback loops are used.

Feedback is a term that comes from biology and it refers to the relationships between predators and prey. If ecological conditions change and a species which is preyed upon becomes very successful and reproduces rapidly, the predators which eat that species will also be very successful and act as a dampener on the success of the prey. This is a negative feedback loop.

Nearly all board games use positive feedback loops as the core experience. For example, in Settlers of Catan players can build holdings which allow them to extract resources. The more holdings they have, the more resources they can extract, which in turns allows the player to build more holdings. The board game Monopoly uses a positive feedback loop and nothing else as a core game mechanic (at least in the early days). Players can purchase property which increases income and that income can be used to purchase more property. The vast majority of Monopoly games turn out the same way: a few turns into the game one player acquires enough property and enough income to dominate the rest of the game, and at that point there is no real point to continue the game. The original author of Monopoly created this simple, runaway positive feedback loop as a metaphor for the dangers of capitalism, and the game itself is not very rewarding.

Games become interesting when you have multiple feedback loops with different rates of return and different risks associated with each strategy. In Starcraft, you can invest in worker units, which increase your income and allow you to reach more advanced stages of the tech tree, but it puts you at risk from being killed by an aggressive opponent early. The board game 7 Wonders features a symphony of positive feedback loops. Players can invest in resources, trade buildings, or buildings which grant free buildings as the game progresses, and they can invest in science, war, or luxury buildings which each have their own rate of granting points. But no game uses feedback loops quite as much as the Civilization series, which has so many different feedback loops that players can play through many 6+ hour games and never explore the full space of what the game has to offer.

Fire Emblem has one primary feedback loop that the player can interact with, and that is the experience and progression system. Players can choose to invest a limited resource, experience, into certain units and those units will become stronger and be capable of acquiring more experience. If a character gets a bad level up, or several, they can be so crippled that you cannot reasonably use them for the rest of the game. People who run through the game with 0% growths don't necessarily worry about this scenario, but for the average player it is true.

Being able to grind enemies makes the game significantly less compelling because once experience becomes unlimited, all depth is lost from the core feedback loop in the game. There are no other feedback loops to take place of the experience loop, and so the game loses an entire dimension. With this in mind, it is quite easy to conclude that a game like FE7 is objectively better than a game like FE8 if you accept the design goal of providing interesting feedback loops for the player. This also means that arenas, boss healing exploits, and infinite spawns must be ruthlessly cut from the game in the interest of preserving that core mechanic.

There are other feedback loops in Fire Emblem as well. The stronger your units are, the faster you can complete levels and the easier it is to achieve secondary objectives. Many side-quests provide additional experience and powerful items that make your units even stronger.

In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, the knowledgeable player is presented with a source of conflict by the progression system. Players can spend a lot of time in a chapter killing all the units in an efficient way (a way that produces the most XP for the relevant units), or the player can beat the level as quickly as possible to get more bonus XP (assuming they know about it). This source of conflict is affords the player the ability to formulate a strategy and provides another level of depth to the game. Even if bonus XP is less efficient than simply killing units during a chapter, it does open up the unique possibility of inflating the growth rates of characters near max level with several capped stats.

Weapons, terrain, positioning, and class bonuses all provide a source of positive feedback. If you have ever started a level, gotten halfway through and thought the level was impossible, then restarted only to find that a few better moves on the first turn make the level much easier, that is because you are taking advantage of positive feedback.

So what other sources of feedback exist in Fire Emblem? Where would you create more sources of feedback in the game if you had the opportunity?

[vonretic]

It's quite interesting what you said here. But I think that another source of feedback is the support system, which turns out to be a positive feedback for the player as you can have the child character the way you want, the same way goes for the skills, you have a multitude of those and you try to get and create the best possible outcome for your characters in terms of skill set, this also being an positive feedback. Although it is true that you do this by grinding too, the feedback in every way it it presented, will start to repeat, what that means is that the feedback can be more dynamic and flexible but in the end it will turn out in a paradox, repeating itself over and over again. Though the fact that maybe some will consider this to be a bad thing, positive feedback always, especially in FE games for me, turns out to be pretty fun and rewarding, making me feel like all the hard work and hours I've spent grinding and evolving my team to not be for naught.

As for what other feedback FE games should have? Well there are quite some... but everyone has their own preferences and as for me I think that making an map full like 30-50 enemies and you have 20-25 player units on field is a great mechanic with rewarding feedback, because, the player unit shouldn't be able to attack just one unit per time, but what if a the player units can attack a multitude of enemies at the same time, like 5-10 at the same time depending on the player unit stats and skills that allows them to do so.

Another mechanic that I thought about, and I find pretty interesting to be implemented in FE games is the dynamic surroundings. Meaning that if there is a tower present on the map the player units as well as the enemies can destroy the tower making it fall on the units present on the map that are in the falling radius of that tower. And not only buildings but as well as animals/dragons/ghosts etc. .

Those are some mechanics I find to be interesting if they were present in the games.

[Agro]

Shadow Dragon has negative feedback in the form of the sidequest-only characters, who only appear if you've been killing off some of your own units. Even the Est characters

I agree that most of FE gameplay revolves around rewarding you for kicking ass and punishing you for sucking. It's arguably what makes the game into such an enjoyable "tactics" experience - if you learn the game and master it, you'll glide through easily. If you're a first-timer, then you'll find it increasingly difficult as time goes on.

I'd probably find ways to aid the player if they're not doing particularly well, and perhaps some sort of dynamic difficulty system that calculates the statistics of your units and generates a coefficient which it then uses to inflate or deflate enemy levels & stats. I think to the average player it shouldn't be too obvious that they're being helped or hindered, and hardcore players could always just disable the system.

[sithys]

Shadow Dragon has negative feedback in the form of the sidequest-only characters, who only appear if you've been killing off some of your own units. Even the Est characters

I agree that most of FE gameplay revolves around rewarding you for kicking ass and punishing you for sucking. It's arguably what makes the game into such an enjoyable "tactics" experience - if you learn the game and master it, you'll glide through easily. If you're a first-timer, then you'll find it increasingly difficult as time goes on.

I'd probably find ways to aid the player if they're not doing particularly well, and perhaps some sort of dynamic difficulty system that calculates the statistics of your units and generates a coefficient which it then uses to inflate or deflate enemy levels & stats. I think to the average player it shouldn't be too obvious that they're being helped or hindered, and hardcore players could always just disable the system.

I have thought about that exact idea before. I do think that there needs to be a neutral AI that can make subtle changes to difficulty in various ways. Choosing Easy/Normal/Hard at the start of the game locks you into that experience for the rest of the game. For new players it would definitely be better to have some sort of dynamic scaling, the game would in the first few stages calculate various metrics like move efficiency and from those metrics it would determine how difficult the game should be moving forward. If the player is known to not be very skilled the game could eliminate fog-of-war cheating for the AI, enemy unit compositions would include more units that your weaker units (which you are known to use) are good at countering to make it a bit easier to get the XP loop started, and it could force the enemy AI to be less optimal in it's quest to kill one of your units.

As you pointed out this is a negative feedback loop that acts on the punishments the player receives. I hadn't thought of if that way so thanks for bringing it up. The more that the player is punished for their mistakes, the fewer potential mistakes the game presents to the player. And as you said more advanced players should be able to turn the system off entirely. This type of dynamic difficulty can be a very good thing if done well. If done poorly, it will seem patronizing and cheap to the player. The easiest way to make changes without the player noticing is to only make changes to systems which are already opaque (such as enemy movement/attack behavior and "True Hit" rates).

[Anouleth]

Shadow Dragon has negative feedback in the form of the sidequest-only characters, who only appear if you've been killing off some of your own units. Even the Est characters

I agree that most of FE gameplay revolves around rewarding you for kicking ass and punishing you for sucking. It's arguably what makes the game into such an enjoyable "tactics" experience - if you learn the game and master it, you'll glide through easily. If you're a first-timer, then you'll find it increasingly difficult as time goes on.

I'd probably find ways to aid the player if they're not doing particularly well, and perhaps some sort of dynamic difficulty system that calculates the statistics of your units and generates a coefficient which it then uses to inflate or deflate enemy levels & stats. I think to the average player it shouldn't be too obvious that they're being helped or hindered, and hardcore players could always just disable the system.

What is the point in letting the player train units if it makes enemies get stronger too? Why not just cut player growths? This just sounds like needless stat inflation.

I have thought about that exact idea before. I do think that there needs to be a neutral AI that can make subtle changes to difficulty in various ways. Choosing Easy/Normal/Hard at the start of the game locks you into that experience for the rest of the game. For new players it would definitely be better to have some sort of dynamic scaling, the game would in the first few stages calculate various metrics like move efficiency and from those metrics it would determine how difficult the game should be moving forward. If the player is known to not be very skilled the game could eliminate fog-of-war cheating for the AI, enemy unit compositions would include more units that your weaker units (which you are known to use) are good at countering to make it a bit easier to get the XP loop started, and it could force the enemy AI to be less optimal in it's quest to kill one of your units.

As you pointed out this is a negative feedback loop that acts on the punishments the player receives. I hadn't thought of if that way so thanks for bringing it up. The more that the player is punished for their mistakes, the fewer potential mistakes the game presents to the player. And as you said more advanced players should be able to turn the system off entirely. This type of dynamic difficulty can be a very good thing if done well. If done poorly, it will seem patronizing and cheap to the player. The easiest way to make changes without the player noticing is to only make changes to systems which are already opaque (such as enemy movement/attack behavior and "True Hit" rates).

This seems like an awful lot of work. Wouldn't it be easier to simply remove the positive feedback loop of experience->growths->high stats then to construct a negative feedback loop to try and cancel it out perfectly?

Edited September 30, 2015 by Anouleth

[sithys]

What is the point in letting the player train units if it makes enemies get stronger too? Why not just cut player growths? This just sounds like needless stat inflation.

This seems like an awful lot of work. Wouldn't it be easier to simply remove the positive feedback loop of experience->growths->high stats then to construct a negative feedback loop to try and cancel it out perfectly?

The player growths is a reward system that keeps the player motivated to continue playing the game (beyond the intrinsic value of the probabilities and spacial tactics). Removing the positive feedback loop would make the game feel 1-dimensional.

[Shrouded In Myth]

I think a more elegant solution is something like Super Robot Wars Skill Points. There are optional objectives that if you do the game gets harder. I think like those optional objectives could expect the player to use positive feedback to reach any benchmarks needed to complete them.

[sithys]

I think a more elegant solution is something like Super Robot Wars Skill Points. There are optional objectives that if you do the game gets harder. I think like those optional objectives could expect the player to use positive feedback to reach any benchmarks needed to complete them.

That is another solution, the dungeon Ulduar used this method in World of Warcraft.

[Anouleth]

The player growths is a reward system that keeps the player motivated to continue playing the game (beyond the intrinsic value of the probabilities and spacial tactics). Removing the positive feedback loop would make the game feel 1-dimensional.

So what you're saying is that the game should deceive the player into thinking that they're making progress, while working behind the scenes to cancel out the impact of their actions?

[electricwolf]

So what you're saying is that the game should deceive the player into thinking that they're making progress, while working behind the scenes to cancel out the impact of their actions?

Aren't most RPGs balanced so that, if the game is played under normal conditions (i.e. no grinding), progression throughout the game and the corresponding increase in player stats is at least roughly matched by the enemies?

I mean, by the time you get a unit from 1/1 to 20/20 it's unlikely that you're facing units of the same quality as when the unit was 1/1.

It's not deceptive and it's a concept that a large number of RPGs (and other genres) share. If you let the feedback loop (of XP -> increasing stats) run without any countermeasures (such as increasing enemy stats, giving the enemy better weapons, more enemies) then the game would surely stop being fun and interesting for anyone who enjoys at least a mild challenge.

Your suggestion of removing the XP -> growths -> higher stats feedback loop makes me think you'd enjoy Advance Wars, which is fun in a different way to Fire Emblem. There's no 'better system' as that is almost entirely subjective.

RPGs rely on feedback loops and dampening the effects of those loops to create a sense of progression throughout the game and create an enjoyable experience. Removing these systems seems like you'd no longer be playing the kind of thing that could be recognised as an RPG.

[Anouleth]

Aren't most RPGs balanced so that, if the game is played under normal conditions (i.e. no grinding), progression throughout the game and the corresponding increase in player stats is at least roughly matched by the enemies?

I mean, by the time you get a unit from 1/1 to 20/20 it's unlikely that you're facing units of the same quality as when the unit was 1/1.

It's not deceptive and it's a concept that a large number of RPGs (and other genres) share. If you let the feedback loop (of XP -> increasing stats) run without any countermeasures (such as increasing enemy stats, giving the enemy better weapons, more enemies) then the game would surely stop being fun and interesting for anyone who enjoys at least a mild challenge.

Your suggestion of removing the XP -> growths -> higher stats feedback loop makes me think you'd enjoy Advance Wars, which is fun in a different way to Fire Emblem. There's no 'better system' as that is almost entirely subjective.

RPGs rely on feedback loops and dampening the effects of those loops to create a sense of progression throughout the game and create an enjoyable experience. Removing these systems seems like you'd no longer be playing the kind of thing that could be recognised as an RPG.

The increase in stats isn't necessarily symmetrical, though. While most stats in Fire Emblem are "opposed", in that one point of defense cancels out one point in strength exactly, not all of them are, such as HP, staff range, movement, changes in skills, changes in weapon access and so forth. In addition, stat gains are not totally symmetrical between player units and enemy units; for example in FE6 through 8, enemy and player units alike tend to have higher growths in HP and strength than in defense, and this is taken to the extreme in FE11 and FE12 where HM bonuses do not apply to defense at all. In addition, both enemies and allies vary in level and as the game continues, this variance may also increase as the developer chooses a mixture of low level and high level units, or the player chooses to distribute experience in a different way, or to forgo experience or pursue it. The developer, indeed, has the power to control these long term changes by adjusting growths. A unit that has balanced base stats, but lopsided growths (such as 20% strength growth and 80% speed growth) might find their use and application transforming radically over the course of the game as they become more specialized.

Even now in Fire Emblem, units do not remain at exactly the same power level relative to all enemies throughout the entire game. If they did, the game would be less interesting.

I do enjoy Advance Wars, but sadly Intelligent Systems has decided to stop making them. So, Fire Emblem will have to do!

I don't necessarily have a problem with positive feedback loops. However, when people suggest constructing elaborate and complicated negative feedback loops and trying to hide them from the player with smoke and mirrors, just so they can continue to have a positive feedback loop in the game, I think it rather begs the question; wouldn't it just be easier to reduce the effect of the positive feedback loop or at least refine it to have less potential to totally break the game? Rather than trying to use complicated AI changes and rigging the RNG and spawning different unit types in order to prevent abusive strategies like "give every kill to Robin", wouldn't it just be better to rethink a character progression system that allows Robin to solo the entire game in the first place?

I remember as a teenaged kid, playing FF8 and being utterly disappointed, almost to the point of disgust, when I found out that enemies got stronger as you levelled. I stopped playing. And the hilarious part is that the "negative feedback loop" backfires horribly, as the optimum strategy is to remain at the minimum level forever and just abuse the tedious but imbalanced junction system to increase your stats, since the game only gets harder when you gain levels, and not when you level up GFs or gain new abilities. Negative feedback loops, like positive feedback loops, can be manipulated by savvy players. If levelling your characters makes enemies harder, and enemy stats are based on your average stats, why not pack your army with low-stat healers and dancers and have just two or three dedicated combat units who can effortlessly shred enemies? If the game gives you free Gaidens if you're low on units, why not engage in mass suicides to get that fourth Warp staff? The notion of a negative feedback loop rests on the conceit that the developer can keep the player in the dark. As soon as he figures out what the game is going to reward him for, it's just another mechanic to be used and abused.

[sithys]

The increase in stats isn't necessarily symmetrical, though. While most stats in Fire Emblem are "opposed", in that one point of defense cancels out one point in strength exactly, not all of them are, such as HP, staff range, movement, changes in skills, changes in weapon access and so forth. In addition, stat gains are not totally symmetrical between player units and enemy units; for example in FE6 through 8, enemy and player units alike tend to have higher growths in HP and strength than in defense, and this is taken to the extreme in FE11 and FE12 where HM bonuses do not apply to defense at all. In addition, both enemies and allies vary in level and as the game continues, this variance may also increase as the developer chooses a mixture of low level and high level units, or the player chooses to distribute experience in a different way, or to forgo experience or pursue it. The developer, indeed, has the power to control these long term changes by adjusting growths. A unit that has balanced base stats, but lopsided growths (such as 20% strength growth and 80% speed growth) might find their use and application transforming radically over the course of the game as they become more specialized.

Even now in Fire Emblem, units do not remain at exactly the same power level relative to all enemies throughout the entire game. If they did, the game would be less interesting.

I do enjoy Advance Wars, but sadly Intelligent Systems has decided to stop making them. So, Fire Emblem will have to do!

I don't necessarily have a problem with positive feedback loops. However, when people suggest constructing elaborate and complicated negative feedback loops and trying to hide them from the player with smoke and mirrors, just so they can continue to have a positive feedback loop in the game, I think it rather begs the question; wouldn't it just be easier to reduce the effect of the positive feedback loop or at least refine it to have less potential to totally break the game? Rather than trying to use complicated AI changes and rigging the RNG and spawning different unit types in order to prevent abusive strategies like "give every kill to Robin", wouldn't it just be better to rethink a character progression system that allows Robin to solo the entire game in the first place?

I remember as a teenaged kid, playing FF8 and being utterly disappointed, almost to the point of disgust, when I found out that enemies got stronger as you levelled. I stopped playing. And the hilarious part is that the "negative feedback loop" backfires horribly, as the optimum strategy is to remain at the minimum level forever and just abuse the tedious but imbalanced junction system to increase your stats, since the game only gets harder when you gain levels, and not when you level up GFs or gain new abilities. Negative feedback loops, like positive feedback loops, can be manipulated by savvy players. If levelling your characters makes enemies harder, and enemy stats are based on your average stats, why not pack your army with low-stat healers and dancers and have just two or three dedicated combat units who can effortlessly shred enemies? If the game gives you free Gaidens if you're low on units, why not engage in mass suicides to get that fourth Warp staff? The notion of a negative feedback loop rests on the conceit that the developer can keep the player in the dark. As soon as he figures out what the game is going to reward him for, it's just another mechanic to be used and abused.

You make some good points and people who play Fire Emblem might treat the game differently than say, Resident Evil 4 (which is the classic example of a game which uses Dynamic Difficulty).

An Ulduar-style positive feedback loop would be better for increasing difficulty, especially if you can find efficient ways to include the narrative system in the feedback loop somehow. An example of where Fire Emblem does exactly that is the secret second playthrough objectives in Radiant Dawn that give extra cut-scenes in the endgame. Some of the tasks you have to complete to get those cut-scenes are somewhat difficult to accomplish. You could take this idea further by adding transparent secondary objectives, as was mentioned.

You could look at it as a string of pearls with a few branches at the gaiden chapters. The gaiden chapters would be "hard mode" and if you meet the objectives of that chapter you move on to the "hard mode" version of the next few chapters on the main string of pearls.

One system that I did not like at all was that found in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The enemies, items, and NPCs in the entire world scaled up as you leveled, which meant that there was no actual sense of progression (and the goblins had like a 10,000% HP growth, you could break your sword trying to kill a single goblin). The system should be far more subtle than that.

In general, I also think that there needs to be many more options when starting a new game. For example, XCOM: Enemy Unknown offers Ironman mode and also many Second Wave options that change the way the game feels. I think it would be interesting if you could configure a playthrough that is hard-mode only, ironman, inverted weapon triangle, randomized classes for all units, with swapped growth rates and bases for defense and resistance, or 0% growths, etc. In this way the player can make the game as difficult as they want while also adding surprise and replayability to the game.

You still want some systems in place for new players who want to play the game for the narrative but who are not skilled enough to play it normally. Fire Emblem does this with "Casual" mode but I think that is somewhat overkill. During playtesting you can find the areas that players have trouble with and tune them better. This approach makes the assumption that there are rational reasons why players have a hard time with Fire Emblem, and it attempts to address those reasons directly. I want to repeat that for emphasis.

This approach makes the assumption that there are rational reasons why players have a hard time with Fire Emblem, and it attempts to address those reasons directly.

[Shrouded In Myth]

I find the weakness of progression systems is that it runs contrary to the design philosophy that a game should be harder as it progresses. This might be because most progression systems simply make your current options stronger instead of focusing on giving you more options. The leveling system of Fire Emblem is an example of the former, while the promotion system of Fire Emblem is an example of the latter.

Edited October 4, 2015 by Shrouded In Myth

[DarthMikey]

This is an interesting way to look at FE's basic design, but in a sense I'm not sure how much I like it because it sort of mechanizes the whole idea/design of the series. You can't always predict the various ways in which players will interpret, connect to, and toy with the different forms of input and feedback any given game presents them with, so I'm not totally on board with this way of looking at game design because it doesn't take emotion and creative ways of playing into account. I.e. Interpreting Monopoly as little more than a basic feedback loop that quickly gets boring isn't really true because most people modify and customize the way they play it on the spot. It's common practice in that game to make deals, gang up on players who are doing well, get screwed over by factors of chance, make bad decisions driven by emotion, etc. etc.

But don't get me wrong, it's a really informative and well-written post, and certainly made me think about the way that FE works. Just airing my thoughts on the whole concept.

[sithys]

This is an interesting way to look at FE's basic design, but in a sense I'm not sure how much I like it because it sort of mechanizes the whole idea/design of the series. You can't always predict the various ways in which players will interpret, connect to, and toy with the different forms of input and feedback any given game presents them with, so I'm not totally on board with this way of looking at game design because it doesn't take emotion and creative ways of playing into account. I.e. Interpreting Monopoly as little more than a basic feedback loop that quickly gets boring isn't really true because most people modify and customize the way they play it on the spot. It's common practice in that game to make deals, gang up on players who are doing well, get screwed over by factors of chance, make bad decisions driven by emotion, etc. etc.

But don't get me wrong, it's a really informative and well-written post, and certainly made me think about the way that FE works. Just airing my thoughts on the whole concept.

Thank you for your thoughtful post. I can see where you are going with this and I can also see that in specific instances what you say might be true. But if you give a copy of Monopoly to millions of players and somehow collect metrics on the outcomes of all the games played with those copies, you are absolutely guaranteed to find that the feedback loop has a sort of mechanistic, soul-crushing, totalitarian authority over the outcomes of the games on average. Game designers, who need to design products for millions of people, are paid to take such factors into account.

What you are saying is absolutely true that we need to think about player emotion and social systems at work, but those factors are decorative. Feedback loops are the cupcake, emotion is the frosting. You can have a cupcake without frosting, but you can't have a cupcake without the cupcake.

[Paper Jam]

I remember as a teenaged kid, playing FF8 and being utterly disappointed, almost to the point of disgust, when I found out that enemies got stronger as you levelled.

Are you talking about character levels or story progression? Because enemies (outside of the Arena) don't get stronger depending on your character levels; their strength depends only on which chapter you're on in the story.

And that's as it should be; enemies SHOULD get stronger the farther you go into the game.

Edited October 4, 2015 by Paper Jam

[DarthMikey]

Thank you for your thoughtful post. I can see where you are going with this and I can also see that in specific instances what you say might be true. But if you give a copy of Monopoly to millions of players and somehow collect metrics on the outcomes of all the games played with those copies, you are absolutely guaranteed to find that the feedback loop has a sort of mechanistic, soul-crushing, totalitarian authority over the outcomes of the games on average. Game designers, who need to design products for millions of people, are paid to take such factors into account.

What you are saying is absolutely true that we need to think about player emotion and social systems at work, but those factors are decorative. Feedback loops are the cupcake, emotion is the frosting. You can have a cupcake without frosting, but you can't have a cupcake without the cupcake.

Alright, that's fair. I still don't know if I agree that player emotion and customized input is just the "frosting," but I understand your perspective and I think this is a fascinating discussion to have.

I basically agree that the feedback loops are the basis for what players ultimately do, but I also think that their ultimate control over the outcome of the game depends on how many options the game gives the player to respond to, which creates more variety in what ultimately happens.

[sithys]

Hey guys, I wanted to mention that a lot of my ideas are motivated by the philosophy of Jonathan Blow, he talks about some of the stuff we are talking about in this video (it's almost 2 hours long but it is fantastic!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqFu5O-oPmU

[Anouleth]

Are you talking about character levels or story progression? Because enemies (outside of the Arena) don't get stronger depending on your character levels; their strength depends only on which chapter you're on in the story.

And that's as it should be; enemies SHOULD get stronger the farther you go into the game.

I said FF8, and that's what I meant; Final Fantasy 8. I suppose technically it's FFVIII, but w/ever.

[Paper Jam]

My mistake; I misread FF8 as FE8.

[sirmola]

The elder scrolls games also autolevel the enemies (plus most of the treasure, but there are ways to get some things early). I remember skyrim doing an excellent job of haveing a perk system that allowed for a wide variety of builds. (skyrim's imperials/storm clockes conflict is also an exelent example of what fe14's "2 factions" plot could have been.)

Edited October 14, 2015 by sirmola